Many of the freedoms we enjoy here in the U.S. are quickly eroding as the nation transforms from the land of the free into the land of the enslaved, but what I’m about to share with you takes the assault on our freedoms to a whole new level.
You may not be aware of this, but many Western states, including Utah, Washington and Colorado, have long outlawed individuals from collecting rainwater on their own properties because, according to officials, that rain belongs to someone else.
As bizarre as it sounds, laws restricting property owners from “diverting” water that falls on their own homes and land have been on the books for quite some time in many Western states. Only recently, as droughts and renewed interest in water conservation methods have become more common, have individuals and business owners started butting heads with law enforcement over the practice of collecting rainwater for personal use.
This is while its scientifically proven that collecting rainwater is to the best of environment and people. Sharon Williams, UH Mānoa’s campus architect, who works on the campus’s long-range water planning efforts, said the current ideas in the university’s Long Range Development Plan focus on collecting rainwater through catchment systems on rooftops and other hard surfaces around campus to filter and use the water. The plan also looks at using unfiltered “greywater” for irrigation on campus, she said. “All of (these) will help to reduce our water bills, recharge the aquifer, limit the discharge of pollutants into the stream (and) ultimately the ocean, and reduce stream degradation,” she said.
Outlawing rainwater collection in other states
Utah isn’t the only state with rainwater collection bans, either. Colorado, Oregon and Washington also have rainwater collection restrictions that limit the free use of rainwater, but these restrictions vary among different areas of the states and legislators have passed some laws to help ease the restrictions.
Gary Harrington, the Oregon man convicted of collecting rainwater and snow runoff on his rural
property surrendered on 2012 and served his 30-day, jail sentence in Medford, Ore.
“I’m sacrificing my liberty so we can stand up as a country and stand for our liberty,” Harrington told a small crowd of people gathered outside of the Jackson County (Ore.) Jail.
In Colorado, two new laws were recently passed that exempt certain small-scale rainwater collection systems, like the kind people might install on their homes, from collection restrictions.
Prior to the passage of these laws, Douglas County, Colorado, conducted a study on how rainwater collection affects aquifer and groundwater supplies. The study revealed that letting people collect rainwater on their properties actually reduces demand from water facilities and improves conservation.
Personally, I don’t think a study was even necessary to come to this obvious conclusion. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that using rainwater instead of tap water is a smart and useful way to conserve this valuable resource, especially in areas like the West where drought is a major concern.
Additionally, the study revealed that only about three percent of Douglas County’s precipitation ended up in the streams and rivers that are supposedly being robbed from by rainwater collectors. The other 97 percent either evaporated or seeped into the ground to be used by plants.
This hints at why bureaucrats can’t really use the argument that collecting rainwater prevents that water from getting to where it was intended to go. So little of it actually makes it to the final destination that virtually every household could collect many rain barrels worth of rainwater and it would have practically no effect on the amount that ends up in streams and rivers.
It’s all about control, really
As long as people remain unaware and uninformed about important issues, the government will continue to chip away at the freedoms we enjoy. The only reason these water restrictions are finally starting to change for the better is because people started to notice and they worked to do something to reverse the law.
Even though these laws restricting water collection have been on the books for more than 100 years in some cases, they’re slowly being reversed thanks to efforts by citizens who have decided that enough is enough. Collecting rainwater has to be seen as the solution to environmental changes like drought. In Kansas, communities in the grip of a multi-year drought are learning how to save water while taking showers by keeping buckets at their feet, and even to save water from their rooftops by collecting rainwater with collection barrels under their gutters.
Because if we can’t even freely collect the rain that falls all around us, then what, exactly, can we freely do? The rainwater issue highlights a serious overall problem in America today: diminishing freedom and increased government control.
Today, we’ve basically been reprogrammed to think that we need permission from the government to exercise our inalienable rights, when in fact the government is supposed to derive its power from us. The American Republic was designed so that government would serve the People to protect and uphold freedom and liberty. But increasingly, our own government is restricting people from their rights to engage in commonsense, fundamental actions such as collecting rainwater or buying raw milk from the farmer next door.
Today, we are living under a government that has slowly siphoned off our freedoms, only to occasionally grant us back a few limited ones under the pretense that they’re doing us a benevolent favor.
Fight back against enslavement
As long as people believe their rights stem from the government (and not the other way around), they will always be enslaved. And whatever rights and freedoms we think we still have will be quickly eroded by a system of bureaucratic power that seeks only to expand its control.
Because the same argument that’s now being used to restrict rainwater collection could, of course, be used to declare that you have no right to the air you breathe, either. After all, governments could declare that air to be somebody else’s air, and then they could charge you an “air tax” or an “air royalty” and demand you pay money for every breath that keeps you alive.
Think it couldn’t happen? Just give it time. The government already claims it owns your land and house, effectively. If you really think you own your home, just stop paying property taxes and see how long you still “own” it. Your county or city will seize it and then sell it to pay off your “tax debt.” That proves who really owns it in the first place… and it’s not you!
How about the question of who owns your body? According to the U.S. Patent & Trademark office, U.S. corporations and universities already own 20% of your genetic code. Your own body, they claim, is partially the property of someone else.
So if they own your land, your water and your body, how long before they claim to own your air, your mind and even your soul?
Unless we stand up against this tyranny, it will creep upon us, day after day, until we find ourselves totally enslaved by a world of corporate-government collusion where everything of value is owned by powerful corporations — all enforced at gunpoint by local law enforcement.
Souces: Natural News/ Ka Leo/ CNS News/ Truth Out
You are fcuking kidding me!
Looks like we need a civil war….
ask about Nestle… if humans are 70 percent water why deny water?
after people discover that they are free they do this??? where are all the other governments now??? pressure over minorities, i see none…
The U.S. Government can kiss my fat hairy ass.
You Americans dont understand much do you?
This is not about the local villa owner collecting rainwater to water his roses. This is about, yeah Nestle for example, buying land upstream rivers, collecting and selling the water before it runs of property in the old traditional rivers and into lakes and finally to you – the people.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/rainwater.asp
Anonymous has officially shit the bed & now ranks with tabloids.
Final paragraph in snopes article.
“Although in a strictly literal sense Oregon resident Gary Harrington was indeed sentenced to prison for collecting rainwater”
People should sue to them who owner of water. Reason is invade to property.
Norwegian Smartass: you are absolutely right!!! For instance, this guy constructed dams on his property and created man-made reservoirs with boat docks, boats, and fish populations for recreational fishing. He did not just collect the water to water his garden. Also, most idiots did not get that these restrictions are imposed by STATE governments, NOT the FEDERAL government.
I smell a mean revolt brewing… better watch yourselves American government, there is a lot more people then government employees.
Western water law definitely needs to be reformed, but this article doesn’t address how it developed. That history is important. To understand it, spend some time researching the “doctrine of prior appropriation” which is codified in state laws, not federal law, although there are federal and tribal reserved rights. It was developed at a time when today’s urbanization and total population were unimaginable, so the premises of its logic (and there is a logic to it) are to some extent increasingly in conflict with “the needs of the many.” That said, it has been subsidized with federal projects like dams, canals, trans-basin diversions, etc. The only reason anyone in the west can be served by any water utility (public or private) is because that utility holds water rights, and those water rights came at a cost.
Most westerners can only collect a fraction of the volume of water they routinely use from snow or rainfall. When my parents had a swimming pool built in their Phoenix area yard a few decades ago I calculated that ALL the rainwater falling on their suburban lot in an average year would be required to fill that pool once—and during that same average year, it would all evaporate.
A collection system isn’t free. And because almost all of that collected water runs off roofs that are covered in variably toxic street dust, bird and rodent shit, and rotting leaves, along with petroleum derivatives used in typical composition shingles, it is not potable unless it’s filtered and treated. With sufficient expertise, outlay, and constant attention, anyone could (hypothetically) build a system to do that, but will you?
There is also one significant misrepresentation here. Water that seeps into the ground is not all “used by plants.” Some of it penetrates beyond the soil and root zone into aquifers. It may (based on gravity and local geology) re-emerge at the surface in springs, or it may only be reachable by wells. Still, it all originates as precipitation. For example, a study published just this month calculated that over half the water entering the upper basin Colorado River (including its tributaries) comes from groundwater. That can be determined because groundwater and surface runoff carry different dissolved materials.
By all means, push for reform. But find out what you’re working against, and what you’re working for, and learn enough to make coherent proposals.
if govt claims ownership then every body owns it as your taxes pay the govt and never forget that – legally it’s yours so take it whenever you want!
Ha Ha – it’s too late America. There is NOTHING you can do. You are slaves to the government and will never be free. Only more and more enslaved!
Our government is going to suffer, for their ways. I would love a front row seat, when the time comes.
Estas disposições são colocadas na legislação há mais de 200 anos… aos poucos, para não gerar escandalos… com pouca ou nenhuma publicidade… com um texto sofisticado e emaranhado, a fim de dificultar sua interpretação pela grande maioria… subornando (em todos os níveis) os legisladores que se ocuparam em redigir tais disposições “legais”…
Os “banksters” estão adquirindo tudo aquilo que é de consumo necessário e obrigatório… para cobrar uma taxa aos utilizadores, garantindo aos bandidos fontes de receitas permanentes… assim acontece com “tributos” sobre a propriedade e consumo… atribuindo aos “Estado” e às “empresas concessionárias” a obrigação de recolher tais tributos e, posteriormente, repassá-los aos “banksters” na forma de “juros” sobre a dívida….
Este modelo é mantido com a utilização dos meios coercitivos judiciais e, até, com o uso de militares para garantir sua execução… é a forma mais comum de escravidão, embora a mídia corrupta e serviçal (e parceira) até hoje ainda não tenha compreendido essa exploração…
Speak french or englush or go back where your place of origin